Tigers 5, Braves 0

It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around: Detroit allowed 1 run to Atlanta in a 3-game series. Dang. That’s pretty dominant. Andrew Miller and Chad Durbin teamed up for today’s shutout. I get the feeling from watching the games that the Braves’ offensive struggles contributed to that, but I give the Tigers credit for not opening the door to let the Braves out of their slump.

ESPN always gets a bit too excited over everything. Well, Joe Morgan. And today’s excitement from Joe Morgan was Andrew Miller relying on the fast ball. Morgan liked the fastball, but he pointed out repeatedly, Miller didn’t really want to try out any other pitch with it working so well. Fortunately that didn’t bite young Andrew. I do kind of wonder where that great slider disappeared to. But he was locating a fastball with movement quite well. He put a few batters on base with stumbles in location, but mostly, when the bat hit the ball, the Braves didn’t get much out of it.

Chad Durbin, for his part, showed exactly why he’s an asset in the bullpen. Hopefully no one takes it as a demotion or insult. With the bullpen’s struggles as they were the first two and a half months of the season, Durbin needed to provide some stability. Tonight, he did that. It’s just the continued progress of the pitching staff. That, and Durbin got an RBI with a sac fly.

The offense struggled a bit after all the ESPN hype, but eventually settled in and scored four runs in the sixth inning of Braves starter Chuck James. Pretty much routine. The Tigers batters just kept taking what was given to them and turning it into hits. Enough of those and you score some runs.

In all, a pretty routine game…circa 2006. Will there be more of those in the Tigers’ future? We can only hope.

The Tigers ended interleague play with a 14-4 record, tied for best in baseball with the Angels. They went 8-for-9 on the road trip and have won seven straight. I’m going to miss playing in the NL parks. But Texas brings its awful pitching to town for a four-game series starting Monday night.

By the way, did you notice all the “Let’s go Ti-gers” chants? Man. There were a lot. I’d love to hear from someone who was there, but on TV, it seemed like the cheers were as loud when the Tigers did something good as when the Braves did. And those chants came through quite well. Considering I had to put up with the annoying Tomahawk Chop and accompanying, er, chant, it was nice to hear Tigers fans showing them up.

Tigers 2, Braves 1

It’s OK. You can admit it. You were waiting to see which Tiger blew the game. Would it be Jason Grilli? No. He pitched last night. Wil Ledez…wait, he’s pitching for the other team not. Bobby Seay maybe? Fernando Rodney? That’s where the big money was. Or else Todd Jones. A 2-1 victory? That wasn’t going to happen.

But no. Nobody blew this. The bullpen pitched fine. The team seems to be settling in recently. Guys seem to have their established roles again. Things are looking up in Tigertown.  For now anyway. I don’t blame you if you’re a bit reticent to believe the Tigers will pull off another close, low scoring game. Last year we got so use to it. This year, Saturday’s game marked the first the Tigers won when scoring less than 3 runs. Two big reasons for that. The first, the Tigers just never seem to score that few runs. And the second, when they do, the bullpen generally blows it.

So anyway, Justin Verlander did quite well. He struck out the side in the first inning and  allowed just a home run to Chipper Jones the rest of the game. Verlander finished with 11 strikeouts, the second best showing of his career. He had 12 Ks in the no-hitter. So in his last three starts, that’s 29 Ks. Verlander always had it in him to be a strikeout pitcher, but never really relied on it as much as he did his defense. So maybe we’re seeing a new Verlander out there.

The offense was supported by Carlos Guillen, who scored once in another close play at the plate, and who put the second run on the board with a home run.

That marked a seventh victory in eight games of roadtrip and a sixth in a row. The Tigers finish interleague play with an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game.

Tigers 5, Braves 0

I’d say nobody could have predicted the fine showing of Kenny Rogers tonight. Few would have expected it or even hoped for it. I wonder if Kenny himself even did. True, he was facing a Braves team that had just been shut out for two straight games. But he pitched six strong innings in his 2007 debut to help the Tigers shut the Braves out for a third game.

Rogers’ pitches had movement. Rogers had movement. He was off the mound like a bounding cat. Basically, had I not known better, I would have sworn this was a game from 2006. This was vintage Rogers we saw. It’s hard to believe he came off a 3 month layoff from a very threatening blood clot removal. I’d say my expectations for the Tigers just grew. The rotation just lept forward with Mike Maroth being traded and Kenny Rogers looking that good. Now of course, we can read too much into this. We can get too excited. So, try not to. And yet? Well, yes. This was a great sign.

John Smoltz kept up with Rogers inning-for-inning until the Tigers’ offense eventually broke it open with a five-run sixth. More or less, what happened to Smoltz has happened to a lot of pitchers. The offense just gets rolling and before you know it, four runs are on the board. It just seems to happen so fast. Now I’ll say there were a few closer calls, as the Tigers took some risks on the base paths. But the aggression paid off with rushed throws or hurried tags that appeared to be only moments too late on the instant replays. I can certainly understand how Braves fans would be frustrated with the calls, but they appeared to be correct. That was all the offense the Tigers put up for the game.

The Tigers bullpen — past and present — did a fine job. The past: Wearing his new Braves’ duds, Wil Ledezma struck out Sean Casey and Brandon Inge (and Bobby Seay, but does a pitcher count?) The present: Jason Grilli, Bobby Seay and Eulogio De La Cruz helped carry Rogers’ shutout for the final three inning. De La Cruz got two ground outs on six pitches to end the game. He’s continuing to look great. I get more excited by the game.

In all, this was a good day to be a Tigers fan. Rogers looked good. Some dead weight in Maroth — as much as we all like him as a person — was traded. The team moved into first place in the A.L. Central and won a fifth straight game and a sixth of seven on the road trip.

Box

Bunt Singles:

• A scary moment when Magglio Ordonez was hit by a pitch, held his arm and came out of the game for X-rays. Jason Beck reports he’s just fine. Maggs is day-to-day with a bruise.
• Sticking with Beck’s reporting, the rotation was set as follows: Rogers, Justin Verlander, Andrew Miller, Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Robertson. Now that is a darn good rotation. That means Chad Durbin is moving to the bullpen. I would imagine Macay McBride is moving to the minors.
• The Miller thing is drawing some debate from the blogosphere. Bilfer sounds a bit concerned at DTW. But in comments on a previous post, I think some other bloggers were hoping for Miller to stay in the rotation, though maybe I’m misreading it.
• As for my feelings, I think it’s fine to keep Miller up because I think he needs to be pushed by major league competition to continue to improve. But I do have some wonder about his innings increase from last season to this, so I expect the Tigers are going to have to get creative to continue this one. As Bilfer points out his his comments, Miller’s innings count on his arm, at the major or minor league level. That’s why I think as long as he isn’t hurting the team or required to suddenly throw 200 innings, it may as well be at the MLB level. It’s his rotation spot to lose, but as long as Durbin remains stretched out, he is capable as well.
• Speaking of that previous post, my predictions were awful, weren’t they? Fortunately, what the Tigers actually did was close to what I hoped for.
• For those readers outside Michigan, Fox Sports posted the list of which region gets which Saturday afternoon game.